Sit Here In The Corner
by fabala-fae
Summary: Yet another tragedy hits home for Luka, and he finds that some wounds will never heal...


Title: Sit Here In the Corner  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Disclaimer: Mine, all mine.  
  
Song: "Never Change" by Puddle of Mudd  
  
Summary: Yet another tragedy hits home for Luka, and he realizes that some wounds will never heal . . .  
  
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Someone's always tellin me I'm no good  
  
Well I don't care what you say  
  
Someone's always giving me a hard time  
  
Well I live day to day  
  
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She was so beautiful.  
  
Luka sat by the gurney and was shocked to find that he was still transfixed by her beauty. It wasn't a traditional beauty, she wasn't a model and she never seemed to know how often she caught so many men's eyes. But she really was lovely. She didn't smile enough though. She'd never allow anyone to see her real smile, not her nurse smile but her real smile, unless she knew they'd smile back. And it was such an intoxicating moment when she smile that a man couldn't help but fall into her quiet spell.  
  
He wanted to touch her hand, touch her skin once more. But she wasn't his to touch anymore. Had she really been in the first place?  
  
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Someone's always puttin me in my place  
  
Like I don't know where I am  
  
So I'll just sit here in the corner  
  
Without any direction  
  
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He hardly noticed the nameless nurses come in from time to time and check the various machines surrounding the gurney. Luka barely looked up when they asked how he was doing, when they offered some pitiful excuse for hope – "She seems to be perking up" – or when they watched him carefully, probably wondering why he was even there. Hell, even he didn't really know why he was there. After all this time they had both moved on; she'd definitely known her future clearer than he had, or he did now, but Luka would be lying if he said she'd occupied his thoughts every day. He knew for a fact that he hadn't had a place in hers. The normal occupant of her thoughts, of this seat, was gone for the moment. Luka neither knew nor cared where. The air was thick with unresolved issues and the tension that only dissolved with closure.  
  
Luka never thought he'd need closure with her. It had seemed pretty damn closed before, no doubt about that . . . but there was something about the way the moonlight caressed her face tonight. Something about how serene she looked with her eyelids closed and unmoving. Something about the ET tube down her throat, mechanically pushing her chest up and down . . .  
  
This wasn't closed now, nor had it ever been. Nor would it ever be.  
  
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Maybe it's all in my head  
  
I think that it's something  
  
Something you said  
  
I understand that some things will never change  
  
Never change  
  
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He hadn't come to see her for a few days after the accident – part of this was because of the unusual slowness of the gossip mill in the ER. The news was quiet and subdued among the nurses, and if Luka hadn't been aware of his increased paranoia and metaphoric raw skin, he would have been sure that there was an organized effort to keep the information from him.  
  
This disgusted him even now. Of course they had history. Of course it would be painful to see her lying there, fighting for her life. But life was pain, death was pain, and above all, love was pain.  
  
It had taken Luka a surprising 45 minutes to decide whether or not to come see her. She wasn't off bounds, after all. He couldn't grasp her hand and he couldn't convince her to come back to life, but he could sit with her. In silence. Painful, tense silence.  
  
Luka's eyes darted to the door again. The guilt sank in his stomach for the hundredth time that day. Luka wasn't afraid – he was a friend, he had a right to be here – but he wasn't feeling great about the thought of the other man in her life coming back through that doorway. Mostly because it would mean Luka would be ousted from his seat next to the gurney, and he'd have to leave. It would be the appropriate thing to do. Luka was nothing if not painstakingly chivalrous. Maybe he was nothing, after all.  
  
The other man in her life. It took Luka a minute or so to correct himself on this. The other man in her life. The only man in her life. Luka didn't count anymore.  
  
It's not like he did in the first place, anyway.  
  
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Someone's always kickin me to the curb  
  
Well it's grindin off my face  
  
Someone's always pushin me to the side  
  
Like I'm standing in the way  
  
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As much as he'd tried, Luka couldn't pinpoint his feelings for her. They'd been strong, he knew that – but love? Could he have loved her?  
  
Fuck yes he could have. If she'd given him a chance, let him take care of her, let him help her out a little bit, Luka could have loved her. It would have been a one sided, drunkenly clumsy love – but if she hadn't closed herself off and convinced herself that life wasn't worth enjoying . . . he could have loved her.  
  
As it was, the smell of her hair was bringing back bittersweet memories. There had been hope with that scent, a slight inkling that life may not kick him so hard when he ran his fingers though her hair. He'd loved the idea of her. She was the remedy to his pain, the salve to his wound, the bandage to his heart. Who'd have thought she'd give him the worst heartache of all?  
  
Even before the accident, even before the doctor dully recited facts and numbers and jargon Luka may have been able to understand in another life . . . the smell of her occupied the room and his mind. It was too poignant a memory to be so fond anymore.  
  
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Someone's always gettin up my face  
  
Like I don't know who I am  
  
Too old to get em in the corner  
  
Without any direction  
  
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Their first kiss had been unexpected but surprisingly planned. On his side, anyway. In Luka's mind he didn't know who initiated it, or even whose idea it was to go out that night. Hers, probably. It had been all innocent to her, a new start with a new man – and in a way, it should have been so innocent to Luka too. But it wasn't. The night was surreal, in a way, and not in the good way. It was another poignant memory that hurt too badly to think about. Yet the kiss was longing, mutually desperate – they both wanted something and they ached without it. Luka supposed that it was this longing that drew them together.  
  
Probably the same longing had doomed them in the end. If there was an end. Could be there be an end with no certain beginning? If the period in time just blurred together, did that count as the beginning? The prologue?  
  
Luka tiredly rubbed his eyes with his stiffening hands, letting go of the bar on the gurney for a few seconds as he rubbed the last few days from his consciousness. Hell, why stop there – if this was inevitable, if she really was supposed to die like this, then why not rub it all away? The months of questioning glances and awkward moments . . . was the tiny amount of fondness in these memories really worth their adjoining pain?  
  
Luka didn't get to finish his thought before he heard the familiar footsteps outside the door. Sighing deeply, he moved to stand up – then thought better of it and turned back to her sleeping figure. His knuckles were almost white from the grip on the bar, and Luka flexed his hands in the inevitable last moment he'd have alone with her. She'd made her choice long before she'd stepped into the car that eventually killed her. She chose him. Even though she couldn't speak, Luka knew the answer wouldn't have changed. It would have been silly of him to think so.  
  
"You don't get to be here," came the gruff voice behind him.  
  
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Maybe it's all in my head  
  
I think that it's something  
  
Something you said  
  
I understand that some things will never change  
  
Never change  
  
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Luka shook his head with something between anger and indignation. "That isn't for you to decide," he muttered back.  
  
"We've had this conversation today," the deadpan voice informed Luka. "I told you to stay the fuck away."  
  
Luka finally lifted his head and looked up from his seat. The man standing before him should have been so familiar, but he was soaked with heartbreak and a dull hatred – to know him further would be to remember a time Luka would sooner forget. "You were not the only one to love her," he finally mused, unable to face the wrecked man in front of him. He'd been that man, watching his love die, knowing he should have done something, anything . . .  
  
"You don't know anything about her." The words were slurred but he wasn't drunk; Luka had had enough exposure to him in this day alone to know that he'd been driven half mad with grief. Shock and devastation had taken a toll in his eyes. They were dull, lifeless – he was dead already.  
  
Luka knew that look. God, did he know that look. "You don't have exclusive rights to the last minutes of her life," he muttered. "You're not the only person in the universe. She had a life before you, after all."  
  
"She had one before you, too," came the emotionless growl behind him. "You were nothing to her. You were a distraction. She wouldn't want you here. If she could talk, she'd ask for me."  
  
"You have no idea what you did to her," Luka snapped, unable to take it anymore. "You *ruined* her for a long time – I picked up the pieces when she was broken."  
  
"She made a choice." The clarity of this statement was startling, and to Luka, particularly cutting. "You're dwelling on nothing. She'd want you to leave."  
  
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Somebody's always out to get me  
  
Somebody's always tryin to kill me  
  
Understand some things will never change  
  
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Luka took a deep breath; slowly he stood up from the chair, but leaned against the wall near the other side of the gurney. He'd let the bastard sit, but he wouldn't let him win. "She's in pain," he murmured.  
  
"You don't know that."  
  
Ugh. Defensive prick. "She's not going to recover," Luka explained slowly. "You know that, right?"  
  
There was silence from the other side of the room, and Luka's stomach tightened when the shell of a man awakened slightly to touch her soft cheek. It wasn't fucking fair. "She can't feel you," he informed him, almost ashamed at how smug he managed to sound. He wasn't trying to be smug, he was trying to be a doctor . . . being a doctor allowed him not to be a man at that moment. Being a man - being a jealous man -was tearing him apart.  
  
"She can." There was a certain fondness in those two words, beyond the gruff exterior and the strong smell of alcohol, that Luka resented. The sweetness of his gaze, the tender touch upon her cheek . . . Luka started to wonder if she really could feel the man's touch, if he deserved to be the one touching her. Luka tried not to despise the broken man in front of him, the man who'd so obviously been weeping only minutes ago. He couldn't help it. Luka hated him.  
  
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Couldn't you have just stayed the same  
  
Why did you have to go and say  
  
Understand some things don't change  
  
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Yet the tender moment was broken when the dreary eyes met Luka's once more. "Leave already."  
  
Luka shook his head once again. "I want to say goodbye to her. I deserve it."  
  
"Deserve it?" His tone was amused and condescending at the same time. "You deserve it?"  
  
Luka didn't have an answer - he dignified the scorn with a scowl.  
  
"Tell me, Kovac," he began nastily, "how old were you when you fell in love with her? Or when you asked her to marry you? How long did you wait until you could kiss her again after she had your children?" Doug slowly turned his gaze back to Carol once again. "You were nothing to her. You weren't even serious enough to deserve one minute with her. We learned what love was from each other – we were the only ones to break each other's hearts."  
  
The words stung Luka more than they should have. "That's the difference between you and me," he murmured, picking up his coat from the foot of the bed. "I never would have broken her heart."  
  
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Why did you have to go and change  
  
Couldn't you have just stayed the same  
  
Why did you have to go and say  
  
Understand some things don't change  
  
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The plane ride home was long and dreary. The trip to Seattle had been less than ecstatic, of course, but the knowledge that she was gone by now haunted Luka. Hell, she might not even be gone yet, Ross may have not had the nerve to pull the plug yet – but Luka would be none the wiser. He sincerely doubted Ross would let him know one way or the other, though Luka may just as well find out from the same grapevine as before.  
  
It wasn't like he blamed Ross for being heartbroken. He'd traveled down that road thoroughly enough to know how he would have easily killed for ten more seconds with Danijela, how softly he'd touched her cheek after she was gone. How one kiss could never be enough to last the rest of his life, but goddamn, how it would have helped. Yes, he understood Ross, prick as he'd proven himself to be.  
  
But it wasn't until he heard a baby whimper in the seat behind him that Luka realized what he'd done in falling for Carol. He'd tried to fill the void in his life with a woman who would only deepen it, a woman who chose the arms of another man . . . a woman he, as Ross plainly said, he meant nothing to.  
  
And Luka began to cry.  
  
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Never change  
  
Some things never change  
  
Some things never change  
  
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End file.
